Packages for drug doses in the form of capsules, tablets, and/or pills are available in a large variety of different sizes, with different numbers of pills contained therein, and with different spatial arrangements. These packages such as medicine storage packages usually include a blister package in which tablets, capsules, or pills are individually sealed between plastic molded pockets for pills and a rupturable foil glued or fused to the first foil. One example of such medicine storage package is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,988,004 and 7,093,716. Often, a memory unit is included in the medicine storage package to produce an acoustic and/or visual alarm signal when it is time to take the next pill.
A common method of detecting a pill being dispensed from a blister package is by breaking an electrical trace which is located in the pathway of the pill as it is pushed out of its blister cavity. For example, a gate is created behind the pill by perforating the paperboard in a pattern like the blister cavity and the conductive trace is run across the gate, passing through some uncut areas in the perforations. There are several problems with this design that either causes a false signal when no pill is dispensed or make it very difficult to push the pill out. The problem with this design is that the uncut areas tend to crack during handling of the blister package over time. This causes a break in the conductive trace and thus a break in the circuit, which in turn, is registered as a pill being falsely dispensed when actually the pill has not been dispensed. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a medicine blister package in which the pill can be easily dispensed from the blister cavity and the package does not cause false signal when no pill is dispensed.
Another problem with the so called break-the-trace design is that the medicine storage package can limit the type of circuitry used to monitor the pills used. With one such configuration, if a user wishes to keep track of which pill is dispensed, the user needs to either use individual resistance levels to each pill (which is very difficult and ineffective for more than a few pills) or the user must have one conductive trace per each pill plus one common trace. This design requires many connections that must be made to the monitoring circuitry thereby overcomplicating the circuitry suitable for a low-cost and easily manufacturable package design. It is therefore desirable to provide a monitoring circuitry switch for packaging of an article, e.g., medicaments that solve the problems, among others, of accidental breakage of the electrical trace which is located in the pathway of the pill and the difficulty in removing the pill from the blister package.